- BACKYARDEOS ALL IMAGES BLACK AFTER HISTOGRAM SOFTWARE
- BACKYARDEOS ALL IMAGES BLACK AFTER HISTOGRAM ISO
I will say this, though – the right half of my image had a much flatter field than without the flats. In all my time imaging, I’ve only taken them twice, and I’ve thrown them out both times, as they made matters worse. But I do have a lot to learn about these flats.
BACKYARDEOS ALL IMAGES BLACK AFTER HISTOGRAM ISO
I feel like there’s a lot to be optimistic about: I’ve got superior optics, am shooting with longer exposures at lower ISO (currently working at ISO 400) and am finally taking flats. Slightly discouraging, but if my guiding setup is finally worked out, I’m happy. I took a lens brush and removed it all this morning hopefully it helps matters the next time out. I can only assume it had to do with general dust on the glass. LESSON LEARNED: Make sure you don’t disturb the optics in any way when setting up for your flats!Īs for all the other crap smeared across the integrated image, I’m less certain of the cause. The combination of the movement and the shaking must have dislodged the dust, causing it to burn into my flats in a different spot. I also had trouble fitting the t-shirt over the end of the scope the rubber band popped off several times. To get the iPad to sit safely on the end of the scope, I had to rotate the mount in RA and Dec to make sure it was pointing straight up. A bit of Monday morning quarterbacking revealed that the major dust mote moved between when I finished my lights and when I took my flats. I knew I had at least one significant dust mote on all of my lights, but this was nuts. This was my first time actually shooting flats, and it showed (more on that later).Īfter stacking/integration, I took a look at the final image and…oh, what a mess. To that, I added 15 darks, 15 flats and 51 bias frames. I cranked out 19 subs of 200 seconds each. Since I was already pointed at M45 and there was a gibbous moon high in the sky (and I didn’t have my LP filter in anyway), the Pleiades seemed like the only logical subject to shoot. With guiding working for once, I figured it would be worthwhile to try and actually image a target. If I were only looking at that and not my exposures, I’d have turned everything off and packed it in out of frustration. My stars rounded out nicely, but my PHD graph was a total mess. I bumped them up according to what I was seeing working for others and, interestingly enough, it seemed to work.
BACKYARDEOS ALL IMAGES BLACK AFTER HISTOGRAM SOFTWARE
I made some changes in EQMOD to adjust the PulseGuide parameters evidently the software was set with defaults that were way too low.
That should be enough for guiding, right? I found I had round stars at 2 minutes and only very slightly oblong stars at 3 minutes. I finished the polar alignment manually and did a couple test exposures of M45 to check my alignment. Throw that configuration upside down and, well, you know what’s next. It turned off as the mount went fully weights-up I suspect it’s because the AC adapter Orion sold me is shit and sits too loosely in the mount. I tried to use the EDQMOD polar alignment routine, but the mount wouldn’t have it.
Last night, I took the gear out to see if I could get everything aligned and get my guiding working. The last exposures weren’t horrible, but the first few were SO much better.
As a result, each image was ever so slightly less focused than the previous one. I re-checked focus on bright stars near my target, so I learned that lesson, but this time, I forgot to lock the focuser. I’ll have to look more into that.Īnother thing I know I messed up: Focus. I’m not sure what happened, but my integrated image looked worse than any of the sub-exposures. Additionally, I wanted to improve my flat acquisition.Īs it turns out, I messed up my flats again. First, I had to ensure that my guiding setup was actually working – prove that the last time out wasn’t a fluke. This outing was as much about the target itself as it was about refining some of my imaging methods. Knowing that tonight was going to be the last opportunity for a few days (snow/ice/rain moving in), and seizing the opportunity conferred by a waning moon, I dragged my equipment (and myself) out for a short session on a target I’ve been meaning to visit: The Rosette Nebula – NGC 2244.